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From things, to cars, to business phones – The case for managing all your devices

by

Macario Namie

When we launched the Jasper Control Center platform in 2004, we had a vision that within a decade, everything would be getting connected: from vehicles to manufacturing equipment to city infrastructure.

At the time, we anticipated that would add up to potentially billions of devices, all of which would enable new connected services that would drive greater business value and better customer experiences. We knew that the IoT-connected world would need a way to automate the management of all of those devices and enable delivery of connected services simply, securely, and at scale.

Fast forward to today, we are now the global IoT platform used by more enterprises around the world (10,000+ and counting) than any other to manage their IoT services. And we continue to innovate.

In 2015, many of the companies using Control Center to manage their robots, POS devices, trucks, wearables, security systems and connected cars started asking: “Why can’t I take advantage of all the capabilities and benefits that Control Center provides for my IoT devices, to manage my business’ mobile phones?”

That question prompted us to dig into the pain points our customers had when it came to managing their business mobile phones and understand what needs weren’t being met by existing mobility solutions. It turned out that the management of mobile phones and services was, and still is, largely reactive and manual, with little use of technology and automation. And the pain points created as a result ranged from delayed services and surprise telecom charges (also known as “bill shock”), to high operational and support costs and a poor employee experience.

Traditional mobility management is fraught with inefficient processes. For example, we discovered that most businesses use high-touch processes for common activities, like adding travel plans, tracking devices, and allocating costs to the right cost center. This forces employees, IT teams, and employee helpdesk teams to waste an extraordinary amount of their time and does nothing to help enterprises that are struggling to reduce their mobility total cost of ownership (TCO).

It rapidly became obvious that the Control Center platform could be used to help solve these critical mobility management challenges. So that’s exactly what we did.

Today we introduced Control Center for Mobile Enterprise, an extension of Control Center designed to meet the connectivity management needs unique to business phones and tablets. Control Center for Mobile Enterprises utilizes our platform’s deep integration with mobile operator networks and systems to deliver:

Real-time visibility into usage and charges – Typically enterprises don’t find out that their employees went over their designated smartphone or tablet data usage limits until 30-60 days after the fact. With Control Center for Mobile Enterprise they know how much data is being consumed by each enterprise device on the platform, and how much it is costing, right this instant. With this complete transparency, enterprises can take action to prevent employees from exceeding their data usage limits before it is too late.

Automated controls over costs and services – Enterprises spend a lot of time sifting through past invoices in order to figure out how to avoid surprise charges in the next month’s phone bill, an approach that is reactive and ineffective. With Cisco Jasper’s platform, enterprises can, for example, create and enforce a roaming policy that automatically upgrades employees who are about to hit their travel plan’s data limit to the next travel plan level. Another example is the ability to automatically detect and suspend any SIM that is removed from a device to prevent fraudulent use.

Enterprise-grade self-serve management – For most enterprises, managing mobile services and devices and supporting mobile employees is fraught with manual, offline processes. Basic tasks like adding features, suspending subscriptions, swapping SIMs, and upgrading devices either are labor-intensive or cannot be performed for more than one employee at a time. With Control Center for Mobile Enterprise, enterprises can self-manage their entire mobile workforce with a few simple clicks.

Our first service provider partner for Control Center for Mobile Enterprise is TELUS, one of Canada’s fastest-growing national telecommunications companies. TELUS is offering the platform to its business customers as part of its new business mobility solution, TELUS IQ Smart Mobility Management. TELUS is extremely committed to delivering exceptional experiences, and this new offering gives their enterprise customers unprecedented levels of visibility and control of their mobility services.

We’ve seen incredible market traction with TELUS’ business customers already, and this is just the beginning. Just as we’ve integrated our Control Center platform into the mobile networks of our 50+ service provider partners to become the leading global IoT platform, we will begin integrating Control Center for Mobile Enterprise with both our existing service provider partners as well as new operator partners around the globe.

After more than a decade spent enabling businesses to connect and manage their “things,” we’re excited to bridge the gap to help you automate the management of ALL your devices.